Transforming the telecom industry with artificial intelligence

Today the role of telecom, across the globe, has become ubiquitous in everyday life of citizens and businesses alike. Earlier, they used to connect humans and then humans with machines and now with 5G and IoT – machines with machines.

Telecom organizations were some of the first to propel technology innovations beyond core telecom that were later built upon by other industries. Examples include the first transistors, first binary digital computer, Unix OS, C programming language, real-time charging, fraud detection, and the first structured setup of consortiums to drive global standards. Ironically, though the digital way of life and doing business has seen an exponential rise over the last 15 years, the average revenue per user (ARPU) and profitability of telcos has continued to shrink. Additionally, commoditiza­tion, and incessant waves of regulatory and cost pressures have triggered a vicious cycle that has led to 10 of the 13 private players to shut operations or initiate bankruptcy proceedings. This has led to the business value continuing to migrate downstream leaving telcos to just provide a critical but key communication pipe.

Traditional telecom data science use-cases have been around customer life cycle and churn management, cross-sell and up-sell, price and promotion sensitivity models, fraud detection and contact center call optimization. AI principles, however, offer much more and are industry agnostic. Here are some AI initiatives telecom companies are taking:

Driving bottom-line growth with AI
Industry estimates state that 15 billion electronic devices are in daily use and slated to increase to 18 billion by 2025. With users trawling the internet to satiate their needs for consumer goods, social interaction, learning and professional goals, telcos are building a treasure trove of usage and transactional data from devices, mobile apps, networks, and so on. Here are some of the many AI use-cases driving efficiencies for a telco:

• Building smart network. When office work shifted to homes, the load on telcos also inversed. While many telecom operators suffered, companies that were using SON (self-organizing network), which relies on AI for optimizing network loads basis the real-time traffic data could handle this fluctuation with ease.
• Predictive maintenance. Using ML algorithms and expen­sive hardware, mobile towers can be visually monitored with drones, and any anomalies easily detected.
• Improving customer engagement/experience. Telcos are investing heavily toward building a personalized intimate connect with their customers, and AI-enabled chatbots are helping them achieve this initiative.

Building new revenue streams with AI
Moving on, telcos today are developing newer channels to solicit and enrich customer data through supporting applications. At play here is the emergence of AI-led business transformation that they can offer clients and build revenue generating platforms. Here are some of the strategies that telcos are looking at:

• Foraying into new businesses such as AdTech. With extensive access to a treasure trove of customer data, telcos can help create customer segments and micro segments for running ad campaigns. This, clubbed with a robust AI-enabled engine, can identify potential customers through clustering and pattern matching, tailoring communication through hyper personalization, and finding the best time and means to communicate through pattern identification. If played right, they can givebig technology companies stiff competition by giving advertisers a quality RoI (return on investment).
• Using new products like connected intelligent enterprises. With accelerated adoption of 5G and IoT in daily business operations, telcos can offer AI-led product offerings in areas of industrial asset monitoring, smart metering, vehicle telematics, etc.
• AI-based digital transformation for SMBs. Telcos have undisputed access to SMEs that do not really have access to latest AI-based tools. Given the technology disruption happening in their business, making tools, such as AI-based chatbots and recommendation-based e-commerce solutions can be a game changer.

Lastly, AI, 5G, IoT, and cloud computing are radically reshaping the telecom industry. The transformation is not just to improve the existing operations but to create new revenue streams for an already commoditizing industry.